Giant iceberg on the move in Antarctica

One of the largest icebergs in the world, A68, is on the move. Since it calved from Antarctica's Larson C ice shelf two years ago, the iceberg has rotated 270 degrees and drifted 155 miles north, carried by the ocean current known as the Weddell Gyre.

Glacier expert Adrian Luckman, a geography professor at Swansea University in Wales, published an animation of the glacier's movements on his blog.

"This animation is made from hundreds of Sentinel-1 microwave images stitched together in five-day intervals," Luckman wrote in the post.

Satellite records suggest A68 is the sixth largest iceberg currently floating in Earth's oceans. It is roughly the size of Maryland, or four times the size of the city of London, and its volume is twice that of Lake Erie. The iceberg weighs more than 1 trillion metric tons.

For more than a year after it initially calved, A68 remained mostly motionless, grounded on the Bawden Ice Rise, a shallow seabed near the edge of the Larsen ice shelf. Last fall, the iceberg began to disengage from the seafloor, spin and drift. Over the last year, A68 has begun to move at an accelerated pace.

When it first split, scientists expected the iceberg to quickly break apart and disintegrate, but it has remained mostly intact. Its resilience is surprising, given its relatively slim shape. Despite a length of nearly 100 miles, the iceberg's ice measures less than 2,000 feet at its thickest point.

Iceberg calving is a natural phenomenon. As inland glaciers supply coastal ice shelves with new ice, older ice is pushed out to sea. But a growing body of evidence suggests rising water and air temperatures are triggering instabilities along the coasts of Antarctica and Greenland, accelerating melting and increases the rates of iceberg calving.

twitter_timer = setTimeout(function() {if(typeof twttr !== "undefined"){twttr.widgets.createTweet('1149277239017652224', jQuery("div[data-tweet-id='1149277239017652224']")[0]);clearTimeout(twitter_timer);}},2000);

Related Links
Beyond the Ice Age

Tweet

Thanks for being there;
We need your help. The SpaceDaily news network continues to grow but revenues have never been harder to maintain.

With the rise of Ad Blockers, and Facebook - our traditional revenue sources via quality network advertising continues to decline. And unlike so many other news sites, we don't have a paywall - with those annoying usernames and passwords.

Our news coverage takes time and effort to publish 365 days a year.

If you find our news sites informative and useful then please consider becoming a regular supporter or for now make a one off contribution.

SpaceDaily Monthly Supporter
$5+ Billed Monthly

paypal only

SpaceDaily Contributor
$5 Billed Once

credit card or paypal

Antarctic sea ice in dizzying decline since 2014: study
Washington (AFP) July 2, 2019
After mysteriously expanding for decades, Antarctica's sea ice cover melted by an area four times greater than France in just a few years and now stands at a record low, according to a study published Monday. Scientists already knew Antarctica was thawing at an increasing rate, like the Arctic, because of accelerating discharge from glaciers, the rivers of ice that push up slowly against the shore. But between 1979 and 2014, they observed a phenomenon that was both intriguing and reassuring: the ... read more